Plethora and Bare Sufficiency:a new practice for a tragic theatre

For the last thirty or so years I have written, directed and designed plays for live performance. In this time I have developed a form of tragedy I have described as Catastrophic, to distinguish it from certain classical forms. In doing so I have invented and refined speech forms which are distinctive to me, and this process continues. I believe the text to be the first element of all dramatic experience. I also believe the traditional realistic play to be an exhausted form, but that the way to escape this dilemma is not to abandon text but to find new ways with it.

In the first place, I wish to know whether speech - which I believe to be an almost plastic, sculptural thing needs to convey meaning, or whether it might be employed to create tensions and ecstasies without bearing specific messages or content. Could a performer utter without - strictly speaking - saying anything? Yet could this audial experience still generate emotion in an audience? Secondly, the converse of this, could a single phrase, or pair of phrases, operate alone to generate emotion - or complexity - by being used rather as a bar of music is?

I call the first version 'Plethora', an overwhelming with words spoken by many voices, almost an orchestra of human sounds. And the second I call 'Bare Sufficiency', where the entire scene to be played hangs from a brief concept, or image, or even something banal. With and against this single phrase, the actions of the performers might serve to reveal unexpected meanings. By extending my practice in both directions - towards more (excessively) and towards less, I would hope to demonstrate the possibility of a new life for text in theatre.

In order to explore these directions I will write and stage two theatrical productions, one based on Plethora, one on Bare Sufficiency. The production of 'Plethora' will have at its heart linguistic excess, involving both the human voice -- both individual voices and chorus -- and sound (though not in conventional music-form). At the heart of 'Bare Sufficiency' will be linguistic spareness: this will be a piece in which the most strenuous attention is paid to movement and gesture; no improvisation will take place, and discipline will be critical to the outcome. Both plays will involve a combination of professional actors and postgraduate student actors from the Exeter Department and both will culminate in a full production for a public audience. Both productions will then become the subject of a one-day public symposium, resulting in publications

In the final phase of the fellowship I will re-work the playscripts for publication and write a critical and theoretical introduction articulating the theoretical basis of the work, considering the new tragic possibilities, and describing the creative process by which the texts and productions were achieved.

Working in the context of the Exeter University Drama Department will enable me to work with groups in a way impossible in the circumstances of professional theatre (in terms of time-scale, group size etc). . Throughout this process I will be working in collaboration with colleagues and researchers from Department, who will contribute in a variety of ways to the development of the practical projects, and to the critical and theoretical discourse which surrounds and supports them.